ANDROID

Gameloft seem to be sticking to their current trend in terms of mobile gaming. A lot of recent releases are very similar to well known console games. Gangstar seems to resemble the infamous GTA series, while Dungeon Hunters feels not too dissimilar to Diablo. Same is true for Eternal legacy,with gameplay and style resembling the hugely popular Final Fantasy games. Although this time I think they're pushing the boundaries between 'similar' and 'clone'. Eternal Legacy, as you would expect from any gameloft HD game is visually stunning. The fully explorable locations are indeed worthy of a congratulatory smile. Sadly while the maps are open and free to explore, I can't help but feel its still very linear in gameplay. I blame this on the little arrow pointing you where to go all the time. The characters look good, but feel too familiar in a way. The lead female role looks an awful lot like Yuna (FFX-2) and an early team member acts like Yuffie (FF7) and looks like Rikku (FFX-2) even the classic Chocobo has an eternal legacy counterpart. The audio quality matches the graphics, each track is well suited to the environment. A bonus feature for a mobile game, is that most characters have a voice over, which is rare for a mobile game. sadly the voices seem to be very badly acted... but we're talking about a phone here, not a console... and if the voices annoy you they can be turned off in the settings. In terms of gameplay, Eternal Legacy features hours of traditional RPG style gaming. there are semi-random battles to help you level up which can be avoided by sneaking round the patrol area. Battles themselves are again very similar to Final Fantasy. It iss a turn based battle sequence in which you can either set your group to automatic and control only one character, or choose to fully control the whole party. Attacks can be queued up to 3 in advance which can be both a blessing and a curse. You can set some attacks going while spending a little time searching your inventory for an item you want to use without having to quickly make an attack. Be careful because you could also set too many attacks when you need to defend. Controlling the whole party up to 3 moves ahead is the best way to take full advantage of the available skills, but it becomes very confusing at times, especially the beginning of the battle. All in all, while I've complained a lot in this review, it is one of the games I'm looking forward to completing. It is a very good game for the Android platform but I personally feel it is a little too similar to it's console clone.